


Of All the Stars in the Sky

by sithsanidala



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Pilots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:02:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27627890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sithsanidala/pseuds/sithsanidala
Summary: AU where Anakin and Padmé are rival pilots competing to be top of their class.
Relationships: Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	Of All the Stars in the Sky

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own any of these characters. They belong to Disney and Lucasfilm.  
> For Lindsey, who i love dearly and always makes me smile when she reads my writing.

Padmé Amidala took a deep breath as she ran her hands over the eggshell colored button up that served as her new school’s uniform. Her hands, usually steady even under the most intense pressure, shook as she buttoned herself up.

She thought of everything that had led her to this moment: trying on her father’s helmet for the first time at age six, starting her lessons at age eight, and flying an actual ship at age eleven. She still remembered the absolute glee she felt when she had done her first barrel roll and how at ease she felt sitting in the cockpit of her family’s shuttle the first time she had been allowed to fly on her own.

And now that she was of age, fifteen year old Padmé was about to start her first day of training at the Coruscant Academy of Flight. Her dream school. All her dedication and hard work had finally paid off, and she was determined to graduate at the top of her class, even if it meant sacrificing a social life and sleep.

Padmé spread out her numerous hair pins, ties, and products on the bathroom counter. As she combed and twisted her hair all around her head, she daydreamed about running errands and maybe even accompanying Jedi on top secret missions in a few years. It was all she ever wanted, and god dammit, she was going to get it, no matter what.

She finished her hair and looked at her reflection. Her always confident smile faltered.

What if I’m not good enough? the voice in her head taunted her. What if you drop out and never become a pilot?

“Stop it,” she snapped. “I am Padmé Amidala Naberrie. If I can rule an entire planet and still have time to train and become one of the best pilots on Naboo, I can make it here. I will make it.”

And with that, she threw on her navy blazer, grabbed her bag, and made her way to her first class of the day.

Before typing her student ID number into the keypad next to the classroom door, Padmé took a deep breath. Her stomach did back flips as the sleek white door slid to one side and the sound of two dozen students jabbering and laughing filled her ears.

Padmé stood awkwardly at the front of the room, scanning the room for a familiar face or an empty desk. Finally, she spotted her best friend, who waved her over enthusiastically from the desk closest to the window.

“Hey, Cordé,” Padmé greeted her as she sat down next to her.

“Dormé, Sabé, this is Padmé,” Cordé said, pointing at the girls sitting behind them. Dormé smiles warmly at Padmé, and Sabé gave a little wave.

“They’re in the dormitory next to ours,” Cordé said. “I met them this morning at breakfast.”

“Sorry I couldn’t go with you,” Padmé apologized.

“Overslept on the first day?” Sabé asked with a giggle.

Cordé rolled her eyes. “I wish. Padmé had to make sure everything was perfect for the first day. All her pens needed to be working, her uniform wrinkle free, and all her jewelry color coordinated. Not to mention her outrageous hairdo takes hours to do some days.”

Padmé blushed. “Today’s isn’t that complicated.”

And it wasn’t. Her naturally curly hair cascaded down her back, except for a small section that was wrapped neatly in a braided bun a top her head. A small silver tiara was nestled just in front of the knot to hide the elastics and pins from view.

“You should have seen my hair when I was queen,” Padmé said. “I don’t think my scalp will ever recover.”

Sabé opened her mouth to say something, but froze. Her hazel eyes were wide open, and she was blinking less than normal. Cordé waved her hand in front of Sabé’s face, but she merely pushed her friend’s arm aside and continued to stare off dreamily into space.

“Hey,” Dormé nudged her shoulder. “What the hell are you...” but she, too, drifted off and stared at whatever was behind Padmé.

Intrigued, Padmé turned in her chair, and she gasped lightly.

A tall and handsome boy had just walked in and sat down near the front of the room. His brown hair was wavy and barely touched his broad shoulders, and he had an angry red scar running through his right eye. He took off his black blazer and draped it across the back of his chair, and Padmé caught a better look at his toned arms thanks to the tight long-sleeved button up he wore.

“Who is that?” Sabé asked breathily, snapping Padmé and the rest of the girls out of their trance.

“I don’t know, but he isn’t from Coruscant,” Dormé answered.

“How the hell would you know that?”

Dormé raised her eyebrows. “I’ve lived on Coruscant my entire life. I know everybody from the surface, and trust me, I would definitely remember him.”

“What if he isn’t from the surface?” Cordé asked.

“This school is crazy expensive,” Padmé said. “Only somebody from the surface would be able to afford to pay tuition.”

“Scholarship?” Sabé suggested.

Dormé smirked. “Unless he’s the best pilot in the entire galaxy, they would never offer someone from the lower levels a scholarship.”

“Well, he’s obviously more than a fair flier if he got accepted here,” Cordé said.

“Oh, I’m sure he’s very talented, and not just at flying.” Dormé wiggled her eyebrows suggestively, and they all rolled their eyes.

“Shut up or he’ll hear you,” Sabé said under her breath.

“I don’t care if he hears me,” Dormé said boldly.

“I doubt he’ll hear you over all the other girls drooling over him.” Cordé pointed at every cluster of girls who were staring at the boy and giggling.

Padmé tilted her head in the direction of the girls closest to her, and she heard bits and pieces of things the girls wanted to do to and with him.

Padmé huffed. “Get a grip. He isn’t even that attractive,” she said.

”Are you blind?” Cordé said. “I don’t like men, but even I know he’s incredibly attractive.”

The door slid open again, and Dormé craned her neck in case another attractive boy walked in.She frowned slightly when it was just an older Twilek female, obviously their professor.

“Settle down, class,” she said firmly. Once everybody had gone back to their seats and stopped talking, she began introducing herself and going over the class expectations and what they would be learning this year.

But Padmé couldn’t focus. Which was strange, because she was usually the most attentive person in her year.

Instead, she found herself staring at him. He had chosen a seat towards the right side of the classroom, and from her seat, Padmé could just barely see the left side of his face.

She had lied earlier. He was very handsome indeed, and the way he carried himself suggested that he always had been and he was well aware of it.

Padmé knew the professor had started their first lesson, but she barely took out her pens and notebook before she went back to examining the boy. She noticed that his skin was a bit more tanned than the natives of Coruscant, like hers;she she assumed he cane from a relatively sunny system similar to Naboo.

But she had never seen him before. When she was Queen Amidala, she made it her duty to be close to her people in order to better serve them, and she knew she would have remembered someone as attractive-

“Miss Amidala!”

Padmé blinked. Professor Syndulla was staring coldly at her. So was the entire class, only with less intensity. Even he was, and Padmé felt her cheeks and ears heat up as she nervously locked eyes with her teacher.

“Yes, Professor Syndulla?”

“Since you clearly think you know enough about the subject that you can just make eyes at Mister Skywalker, maybe you can answer my question?”

The entire class snickered. Skywalker, she assumed that was his name, smirked at her.

Padmé gulped and turned her attention to the hologram beside Professor Syndulla. Her stomach felt heavy, like it would sink into her shoes. She knew she had studied hyperspace before, but for some reason she couldn’t remember anything about it.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I do not know the answer.”

The professor raised her eyebrows. “Does anyone want to help Miss Amidala out?”

None of the students moved a muscle, except for Skywalker, whose hand shot up into the air. The girls in the class immediately leaned forward, intrigued to hear him speak.

“Skywalker?”

“You can’t make a jump to hyperspace within a large gravity well, such as a planet or another large object, because the gravity well will rip you out of hyperspace almost immediately. Not to mention the extreme damage it will cause to your hyperdrive.”

“Very good, Mister Skywalker. You all could learn a thing or two from him, especially those of you who don’t pay attention.”

Padmé heard a few girls giggle, and it took all her willpower to not slide off her chair and onto the floor in embarrassment.

She was relieved when what seemed like an eternity later but was merely an hour and a half had passed, and she could leave.

As Padmé walked to her next class, she wished that she wouldn’t run into anybody from Professor Syndulla’s class.

But in a cruel twist of fate, the first person she saw when she entered the classroom was none other than Mister Skywalker himself.

Keeping her eyes in front of her, she tried making her way past him to sit somewhere in the second row, but stopped in her tracks when she felt someone’s hand around her wrist.

She whirled around, ready to give Skywalker a piece of her mind, when he said, “Hey.”

“Hello,” Padmé said nervously. Part of it was because he was so close to her that she could see how his hair curled around his ears and neck. But also because she was afraid of what he would say to her. What if he teased her for earlier?

“I just wanted to let you know that I’m always free to help you out with whatever classwork you need.”

Padmé scoffed lightly. “Excuse you. Why would I need help from you?”

“You obviously did just last class,” he said smugly. “You know, when I bailed you out after you made a fool of yourself in front of everyone.”

“Is that so?” Padmé snapped. She shook her arm loose from his grip while she stared him down. “I could have easily answered Professor Syndulla’s question. I was just distracted-“

“-By my good looks.” Skywalker raised an eyebrow at her. “It’s okay to admit that you like me, you know.”

Padmé scoffed. “Listen, Skywalker.”

“Anakin,” he said, interrupting her again, which only made Padmé angrier.

“Whatever your name is. I do not like you. You are not smarter than me. What happened just now was only a one time thing. I’ve always been at the top of my class and that won’t change. I do not need a tutor, especially a cocky one like yourself.”

“Me? I’m cocky?”

“Yes, you are.” And with that, Padmé straightened up and sat down at her desk, determined to put Anakin Skywalker our of her mind.

A difficult task, seeing as he answered every question that was asked during class. Everytime he was correct, which was always, he would turn to face Padmé and raise an eyebrow at her as if to say “Are you sure I’m not smarter than you?”

It was then and there that Padmé decided she didn’t care how good-looking he was. He was just another prick with an over inflated ego. Everytime she felt butterflies in her stomach because of him, she ordered her body to digest them. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of swooning and sighing over him like every heterosexual girl at the Academy.

If only her friends felt the same way as her.

“Do you think he has a girlfriend?” Dormé said as she plunked her tray of food down next to Padmé.

“Who?” she asked.

“Skywalker, obviously,” Cordé said with a faint smile. “She hasn’t stopped talking about him since this morning.”

“His name is Anakin, by the way,” Padmé said.

“How do you know that?” Dormé asked.

“He told me during second hour.”

“You have more than one class with him?” Sabé asked, her eyes wide. “I’m jealous; I only have the one, and he sits so far away.”

“He’s only two rows in front of you,” Padmé mumbled.

“Why do you have a problem with him?” Dormé asked.

Padmé narrowed her eyes, confused “I don’t have a problem with him.”

”Yeah, you do. Everytime we mention him you make a face and act like he punched your mom.”

“You’re exaggerating. And why wouldn’t I be upset with him? He’s an arrogant pretty boy who thinks he’s the most intelligent man ever just because he answered a few questions right.”

“He showed you up again, didn’t he?” Sabé asked at the same time that Dormé dreamily said, “He is pretty.”

Padmé rolled her eyes. “He did not ‘show me up’, Sabé. Instead of doing the proper thing and raising his hand to answer a question, he would blurt out the answer before anybody got a chance to do anything. Our professor didn’t mind, of course, because both he and Anakin think he’s some kind of a fucking child prodigy.”

“He’s so smart he doesn’t need to follow the rules.” Dormé sighed. She missed her mouth and spilled Jawa juice down the front of her shirt. “Oh, fuck me,” she muttered as she tried in vain to wipe it off.

“You wish he would,” Cordé said. Dormé threw her wad of napkins at Cordé’s head.

Padmé almost regretted coming to Coruscant. If she had been told that she would have to deal with a stuck up pretty boy and his dozens of devoted admirers, she would have stayed on Naboo and studied there instead.

***

A week went by, and Anakin Skywalker continued to be an arrogant prick. Padmé did her best to ignore him, but it was hard when they shared four out of seven daily classes.

They were always the first two hands in the air when their professors posed a question to the class, and whoever correctly answered said question always turned and grinned sarcastically at the other’s scowling expression. Padmé had even started to hover slightly above her seat just so she would be taller and more noticeable. She knew she looked strange, but she did not care. She would do anything to prove she was better than him.

Anakin hadn’t offered to tutor her again, but he did make a show of “dropping” his tests in front of her so she could see what grade he got. Padmé didn’t indulge him, of course, even when her score was higher than his.

It was a vicious cycle of bragging, making faces, and witty remarks as each one tried to outdo the other. It had gotten so bad that one night, three weeks into the semester, Cordé shut the door to their room and glared at Padmé.

She looked up from her essay curiously. “Did I accidentally use your shampoo again? Because I promise-“

“-This isn’t about shampoo,” Cordé snapped. “It’s about your petty feud with Anakin.”

“What petty feud?” Padmé played dumb, but Cordé had known her long enough to call her out on her bullshit. One of the things she loved (and hated) about her.

“You know what I mean. You two are so annoying, always competing with each other. Even Dormé is getting tired of you bitching about him, and you know her; she even loves listening to Anakin talk about power converters and gun turrets.”

“I’m sorry, Cordé, but you know me. I worked so hard to get here, and I have to continue to work hard in order to be taken seriously as a woman pilot. I will not be second to anybody, especially him.”

“I know that, Padmé. It’s one of the things I respect most about you.” She sighed. “I just think that you should just forget about Anakin and focus on other, better things. Like us, your studies, and the fact that we will be doing flight simulations soon.”

Padmé grinned. “You’re absolutely right. I’ve waited my whole life for this. I’m not going to let a childish asshole ruin this for me.”

***


End file.
